Aegis VII
Aegis VII was a remote planet of key importance in the Dead Space ''series, housing a man-made Red Marker as well as a huge Necromorph entity known as the Hive Mind . Location The seventh planet of the Cygnus system and like-named cluster,''Dead Space: Downfall identifies Aegis VII as being in the Cygnus System; however, it is referred to as the Aegis System by other sources. Aegis VII was located at an unknown distance from Earth although it was described to be "several million light years from home" by a surveyor. Aegis VII had an unusually large quantity of precious metals residing under its planetary crust.Dead Space: Chapter 7: Into The Void: Mining TimelineA text log located on the Mining Deck states that normally the quantity of precious minerals would be 35%, but the valuable mineral concentration of Aegis VII`s is 65%. It was also the resting place of the Red Marker. Description Aegis VII appeared to be a rocky planet, similar to Earth with a molten core. The planet had an orange-tinted sky with an atmosphere that did not appear to be too thick. Stars and the sparse ring of rocks which surrounded the planet are visible even during the day. The terrain was mountainous and barren. Ravines and caves are common across the surface as well as smooth barren plains requiring a crawler or a shuttle to be traversed quickly. Because the planet's atmosphere was so thin, wearing an engineer RIG was advised while exposed to the surface conditions. Surface weather consisted of high winds and dust storms, making prolonged periods of outside work inadvisable without sufficient protection. However, the atmosphere did contain significant levels of oxygen for a human to breathe. After Isaac Clarke returned Marker 3A to its pedestal on the planet's surface, it set off an EMP pulse. The pulse disabled the USG Ishimura's gravity tethers which at the time are suspending a gigantic chunk of rock that was excavated from the planet. The suspended chunk of rock began to fall from low-orbit and ended up causing a massive planetary collision which eventually left the planet seismically unstable. This caused the molten core of the planet to rise up to the surface which created large lakes and rivers of magma that spanned across the surface of planet. With the gravity field of the planet weakened due to this massive collision, it exploded into millions of chunks of debris and asteroids due to a total collapse of the planet's structure. History First Aegis VII Incident After the Black Marker was successfully reverse-engineered by the Sovereign Colonies, one copy called the Marker 3A was relocated to Aegis VII where the research team continued to attempt to decipher the symbols on its surface. A number of experiments based on the finally deciphered symbols resulted in the synthesis of an alien microbial life-form that was composed of recombinant DNA which led to a number of subsequent horrific events caused by its release into the wild. The system was erased, abandoned and the Aegis Cluster was marked off limits to all space traffic as a prohibited zone by Ambrose Caiden of the Sovereign Colonies Council. These specific events also ended up happening at the installations that are set up on both Aspera and Kreemar.Dead Space: Catalyst Page 195, 285-286 Second Aegis VII Incidient The planet eventually became home to an illegal mining facility set up by the Concordance Extraction Corporation. Some time before the discovery of the Red Marker, the colonists began experiencing insomnia and uneasiness. At the time of the Ishimura’s arrival before the commencement of the planet cracking, the Red Marker was found. Many Unitologists believed this to be the Marker from their spiritual texts and desired it to be moved to the colony. After it's removal, many colonists began experiencing hallucinations, dementia, heightened aggression and other psychological disturbances. Both the suicide and murder rates on the colony skyrocketed in the days following the Marker's unearthing. Upon hearing about this "Marker", Captain Benjamin Mathius ordered it to be taken aboard the Ishimura, apparently following orders from the Church of Unitology. Some strange organic matter was discovered growing in the colony soon after the artifact's discovery. A week after the planet crack, the colony experienced a blackout and all radio contact was cut off. Soon after, the colonists began going insane, causing panic, murders, committing suicide, mutilating each other and themselves, paving the way for the Necromorph outbreak. This prompted the surviving colonists to flee Aegis VII via shuttles from the shuttle bay to the safety of the Ishimura. An overloaded passenger shuttle crashed into the bay, destroying all of the remaining shuttles with it. All of the remaining survivors ended up stranded on the planet and started to become more and more desperate to push upward for the Ishimura in order to escape the nightmare that was taking place on the colony. Some time later after the Necromorph outbreak managed to overrun the colony, Isaac Clarke went down to Aegis VII to return the Red Marker back to the pedestal from which it was removed, believing that it would stop the Necromorph threat from spreading further. After managing to fend a large number of Necromorphs off that attempted to impede him, Isaac successfully managed to return the Red Marker back to the pedestal, but in the process of doing so, the Red Marker set an EMP pulse off which unfortunately ended up disrupting the gravity tethers that are holding a large portion of Aegis VII several miles above the surface. After seeing that the excavated chunk of Aegis VII was slowly falling from orbit and threatening to crash into the planet, Isaac proceeded to make his way back to his shuttle in order to escape the planetary destruction that was about to happen. Once inside a decontamination chamber, Kendra Daniels appeared, locking Isaac inside the chamber and in the meantime proceeded to remove the alien artifact from its pedestal in order to return it to the Earth Defense Force. As soon as she was about to climb aboard and commandeer the shuttle which Isaac used to arrive on the colony, the Hive Mind rose up from the crater that was made in the process of the Ishimura's planet crack and ended up crushing her with one of its tentacles. Isaac was faced with no other choice, but to confront the Hive Mind as it prevented him from escaping the doomed planet. After a somewhat tedious battle with the huge Necromorph, Isaac proceeded to leave the planet on his shuttle just before the extracted chunk of Aegis VII fell on the surface. Final destruction Aegis VII was severely devastated from the impact of its extracted piece of crust which Clarke was publicly recognized as being responsible for it. After the tremendous chunk of rock struck it's surface, the planet became seismically unstable. Much of the surface began flowing with large rivers of magma and also began falling apart. The USG O'Bannon visited the planet to investigate and recover the remnants of the Marker 3A. The gravity stabilizers are deployed onto Aegis VII from the O'Bannon to stabilize the planet. Circumstances after recovering a fragment of the Red Marker caused the O'Bannon crew member, Nikolas Kuttner to destroy one of the gravity stabilizers, subsequently causing Aegis VII to explode. The following explosion heavily damaged the O'Bannon, killing several crew members. Because of the recovered Marker fragment, it launched yet another Necromorph outbreak similar to that occurred on the Ishimura. The outbreak on the O'Bannon was soon brought to an end as the shard was thrown into the ship's reactor core, ending the nightmare for good. Trivia *Strangely enough, the air on Aegis VII was breathable in Dead Space, as demonstrated by Kendra Daniels not wearing a RIG while on the planet (this is debatable however, as it was shown that she wears a RIG under her clothes which can be noticed). This runs contrary to both Downfall and Extraction. This may be because they are in a work zone where they most likely demand that all safety equipment be worn, in case of breathing in bits of poisonous rock, for example. Another reason could be that the colonists terraformed the atmosphere to save using oxygen supplies to breathe. *If the statement "several million light years" is taken literally, it is almost certain that the Aegis system is located in either the Andromeda or the Triangulum Galaxy, although it is most likely that the statement is a mere hyperbole that exaggerates Aegis VII's distance from Earth and implying great distance. The statement also possibly includes the illegal mining colony more or less staying undetected until the Ishimura ''arrives. *Also, in ''Dead Space 3, there is a text log that states S.C.A.F. discovered Tau Volantis "on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy" and also "It is the farthest man has ever gone from Earth". Considering that they also discovered Aegis VII sometime before the first outbreak on Tau Volantis that destroyed S.C.A.F., can only mean that Aegis VII is somewhere in our galaxy closer to Earth than the icy "back water planet" Tau Volantis. *The early look of the planet was greatly different from the final production. The terrain looked much less symmetrical with huge canyons riddled across the planet. The hole where the colony was located looked more like a volcano. The planet also appeared more white-ish, as in the final production the ground glows almost in red colors. *Coincidentally, after the planet-crack, the planet resembles the first Death Star from the Star Wars series. *After the events of Dead Space, EarthGov has put a military blockade around Cygnus System and quarantined the remains of the planet, as seen in Dead Space: Salvage. Gallery Deadspace_ageis7.jpg|Early look of the planet Early aegis vii.png|Early look of Aegis VII as seen in the "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" E3 trailer Notes In the Dead Space universe, the location of Aegis VII can be found within the Cygnus System, possibly hinting that the Cygnus System is located in or around the Cygnus Constellation. Aegis VII is shown to have a ring of asteroids around it, although logs describe this as a side effect of the planet cracking process. Sources de:Aegis VII es:Aegis VII Category:Planets Category:Locations